The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency will continue its oversight of the Department of Energy’s cleanup of the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant Site in south central Ohio, under a five-year, $3 million grant from DOE,
The deal will be worth up to about $616,000 a year and will support ongoing activities funded under a previous grant that expired on June 30, DOE said in a press release.
The department said the financial assistance “helps the State of Ohio recover costs and supports a framework for successful cooperation between DOE, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency … and Ohio EPA in addressing environmental impacts associated with past and present activities at the site.”
The grant allows Ohio, among other things, to provide “information on preferred regulatory and technical approaches to ongoing cleanup and related decisions, including future site uses,” according to DOE’s press release.
The Portsmouth Site enriched uranium for defense and civilian programs from the early 1950s through 2001. Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth is DOE’s prime cleanup contractor at the site, under a 10-year pact that expires in 2021 and is worth up to $2.6 billion.
